The Park
In contrast to the gray, stark shapes of the downtown area, the FSA Memorial Park brought nature and greenery to the urban jungle. An expanse dedicated to recreation and natural beauty, the park’s hills and forests spread for miles, home to entertainment areas such as amusement parks, the city zoo, and the great glass structure of the National Greenhouse.
In the Avenue of Heroes, colossal statues reached to the sky as tributes to those who had served the glory of the FSA. Built after the conflict with the Imperials, the Avenue housed statues of such luminaries as Joseph Gibson and Nathan Spencer. The Avenue was considered one of the premier tourist spots in Ascension City – until the terrorist attack which turned the city into a desolate graveyard.
The park landscape took on an alien appearance in the wake of the bombing. Mighty cracks tore the hills apart and mashed huge areas together, creating hundreds of green isles of vegetation. Yet there is still a certain beauty to the desolate park, the unscathed trees and grass testament to the fact that even though the explosion eradicated hundreds of thousands of lives, some things still cling to life. BioReign have set up outposts throughout the park, though what their goal is in this strategically unimportant location is unclear.
DRAYTON AA-9 "HIKER"
Caliber: 12.7mm / 15.5mm
Weight: 17.5 kg empty
Fire Mode: 9-Round Burst
Magazine Capacity: 6 x 9-Round Cartridges
Effective Range: 50 meters
Manufacturer: Drayton Arms Company
The AA-9 HIKER (High-Impulse Kinetic Energy Round Weapon) is a shoulder-fired, burst-mode anti-armor weapon with unique design characteristics.
A single trigger-pull releases a rapid-fire burst of eight 12.7mm copper-core Penetrator slugs followed by a single 15.5mm round.
A single oversized cartridge houses all nine rounds in individual rifled chambers. The cartridge corkscrews backwards through the mechanism as each round fires in rapid sequence, with a friction-damping system absorbing most of the heavy recoil. The empty cartridge is ejected from the rear of the weapon over the user’s shoulder.
When aimed from the shoulder from a tightly-braced stance, all nine shots will typically group with a reasonable degree of accuracy and precision. The initial eight slugs successively penetrate even the toughest vehicle armor to cause massive internal secondary fragmentation, followed by the high-explosive round to deliver the final coup de grace.